The day started like any other.  Brandon left at 8:30 for his class and I dragged myself out of bed to freshen up and read.  I boiled some water for tea and to my horror saw the largest spider I have ever seen outside of the zoo sitting in our dish rack.

I stepped back.  Slowly.  This thing was huge.  And Brandon wasn't home to deal with it.  I did what any arachnophobe would do -- I set up camp across our apartment and eagerly awaited Brandon's return.

Luckily the spider stayed in his comfy new home in the dish rack until Brandon returned.  Unlike me, Brandon likes bugs.  He carefully captures them, taking care not to hurt/kill, and escorts them safely outside.  He thought this was going to be a straight-forward removal process.  Not so.

Brandon carefully grabbed the dish rack and walked it and the spider outside of the apartment.  He knocked the rack against the ground a couple times to get the spider out.  I watched from inside the apartment.  Then I made a big mistake.  When Brandon finally managed to get the spider out, I slammed the door.  Then I felt bad that I didn't give Brandon a chance to come in, so I opened the door.

The damn spider ran right back into the apartment!!

Holy crap.  I jumped on the bed.  This thing scared me.  And now it was crawling around the apartment.  Brandon suggested we get breakfast and deal with it later.  I refused - "we need to deal with this thing now, or else it will have spider babies and then we'll be infested."  The "we" part really meant Brandon.  We have our roles in the relationship and he definitely deals with the creepy crawlies. 

I wish I got photos or video.  But I was too scared.  I needed to be 100% on guard in case this thing came running my way.  It ran very fast.  We found it behind the furniture near the door.  After numerous attempts at swatting it and throwing water on it, Brandon managed to sweep it out.  It even made him a little jumpy.

The ridiculous thing is that this spider was big but not nearly as big as other spiders here in India. 

I haven't exactly been chronological in my posts, so you may have assumed correctly that we are staying in McLeod Ganj/Dharamsala for a while. 

I posted a video (last post) of the apartment we rented.  It's 300R/night ($200/month) and has a little kitchen so we can cook our own food.  Our balcony overlooks the valley - there's a waterfall, eagles soaring, cows and goats grazing - a beautiful scene to wake up to every morning.   We even have a resident mongoose who makes an appearance one in a while. 

We took an Indian cooking class this week taught by a woman from Mumbai.  Well worth it -- we learned to make all sorts of yummy stuff.  Malai kofta (my favorite), stuffed paranthas, samosas, dal makhani, aloo gobhi, and more.  Yum yum yum.  And we ate it all.  We will be making the food when we return, if we can get our hands on the right spices.  We are big fans of Indian food.

Tomorrow Brandon starts his Buddhist philosophy class at the Tibetan library.  He's on the fast track to enlightenment.  I'm hoping it will rub off on me so I don't have to study as much as he does.

The biggest news is that we are now "English conversation partners" at Gu-Su-Chum, an organization that helps recently arrived Tibetan refugees.  They are all either former political prisoners or family members of political prisoners.  I put "English conversation partners" in quotes because although that's what we are officially doing, it's more like teaching a class.  The students (about 16 of them) just started studying English so every day we plan a lesson, teach it, try to dream up fun exercises, and so on.  It's challenging but already really rewarding because they are so appreciative.  What an amazing group of people. 

Long before we left for India, Brandon and I stumbled across a video of the India-Pakistan Wagah border closing ceremony.  One would think that the border closing between two countries with tenuous relations would be somber and stern.  Not so! 

Amritsar is only a 45 min drive to this border closing.  It's a popular tourist attraction and like tourists, we joined a share jeep with 8 others for the evening's ceremony.  Our driver was a capable Sikh (with dagger! Still fascinates me!), who got us there in record time.

As we approached the border, the men were separated from the women for a security check.  The women had a little tent to go into and there was no line.  Myself and the Dutch woman I was with were asked what country we were from and we proceeded to the other side.  Our poor male partners waited in line for the patdown.

One thing we've noticed about India is that we regularly get VIP treatment.  It's embarrassing, feels unfair, but also is endearing and welcoming.  Our foreign passports got us into the VIP section at the border closing ceremony, which meant we got to sit in the bleachers closest to the border, although the "real" VIP section,which had padded seats, sat closest to the border. 

The border guards wear these crazy hats.  I've noticed other police with little tassles but these win.  This guy below guarded our section, yelling at us constantly to sit down.

The festivities began with loud Indian music pumped over the loud speakers.  Children and women lined up to run Indian flags back and forth.  It appeared to be a real honor to be selected.  A minor dance party erupted on the street. 

The guards came out and marched around.  The ringleader shouted things in Hindi and the crowds responded with zeal.  Fists pumped, flags waved, massive amounts of cheering!

The ceremony lasted about 1.5 hours in the blazing sun. There were 2 key elements amongst the ringleader's chanting: marching and shouting.  The guards marched and kicked as high as possible around the street and back and forth to the border.  More peculiarly, there was a shouting competition between the Indian guards and the Pakistani guards.  (note: a similar ceremony was taking place at the same time on the Pakistan side, albeit with fewer supporters)

At the same moment, one guard on each side would begin to shout for as long as possible.  Whomever shouted the longest won.  It didn't matter that India lost most of the times, the crowd still roared.  It was quite hilarious.

At around 7pm, the flags of both countries were lowered dramatically and the gates shut.  The border was closed for the day.   

Check out this video I made of the border closing ceremony.  It will give you a much better visual of the event.  I highly recommend it if you find yourself in the area.

We arrived in Amritsar after a 9 hr train ride in a fancy first class train compartment.  Without AC.  Which meant the windows stayed open and we didn't sleep much due to the train horns blowing or worse, the sound of a train whooshing by on the next track.

We were approached by about 5 rickshaw drivers, each offering to take us to our hotel.  The cheapest?  A cycle rickshaw driver ... 40 rupees.

We hadn't ridden in a cycle-rickshaw yet.  And I don't think I'll ride in one again -- at least in a large city with cars and trucks zooming by.  I resorted to the "if I don't see it, it doesn't bother me" approach of ignoring all of our near-death experiences.  Although we asked to be taken to our hotel the cyclist tried to take us to another place.  I thought this would not happen -- who would want to bike across town only to be told to please take us to our destination?  I was wrong.

Eventually we ended up at our hotel, Hotel Sharma.  It was walking distance from the Golden Temple and recommended by the Lonely Planet.  The price was decent and the room was fine, sort of.  The mattress on Brandon's side of the bed was nearly non-existent but he improvised and folded in half to ensure decent sleep.

We visited the Golden Temple twice: during the day and at night.  I'm the first to admit I didn't know much about Sikhism before our visit to Amritsar.  Sikhs - the men wear turbans, carry a dagger, and after 9/11, Sikhs were wrongly targeted as Muslims and were victims of hate crimes. 

We learned that the Indian state of Punjab is home to around 75% of the world's Sikhs.  Sikhism started in the 1500s by Guru Nanak Dev who was unhappy with Islam and Hinduism.  He believed that family should be more central to life, that the caste system should be eliminated, and that God is universal (disclaimer: this is my basic read of Sikhism.. it's more complex than this).  The Sikhs are very open to all religions and allow all visitors in their holy site, the Golden Temple.  The only requirement is that you must remove your shoes, cover your head, and leave any drugs/alcohol/tobacco outside the gates. 

We readily obliged and circumabulated the complex.  It was beautiful.  I kept thinking about how we missed out on seeing the inside of St. Peter's in Rome due to the closure for mass.  The Golden Temple is the equivalent in Sikhism.  Anyone can partake in the free meals they offer there, as well as as the free dormitories (we skipped). 

We checked out the Sikh museum and learned how oppressed the Sikhs have been over the years.  They seem to pride themselves on being incredible fighters and their museum honored everyone who died for the cause.  We also visited another museum across from the complex that recalled a massacre by the British in the early 1900s. 

We decided to return to the complex at night the next day.  It was equally as stunning, in a different way.  Even though it was 10pm, the place was still crowded.  We met an Irish traveler who was staying at the Temple who said there were people there at all hours.  Apparently all Sikhs endeavor to spent at least a week of their life at the Golden Temple, in service to the complex. 

Look forward to the next blog post about our trip to the Pakistan border.  We caught a share jeep with 8 other people with a trusty Sikh driver.  I don't know if I'll ever get used to the dagger... how do they get through airport security. 

I swore I wouldn't do it.  An ashram is just too woo-woo new agey for me.  I don't have or want a guru, baba, or spiritual guide.  Brandon is as close as I get to a guru (he's also my fashion advisor).  So how did we end up spending 5 days at the Sri Sant Sewa Ashram in Rishikesh?

It's just so boring to stay at a regular hotel.  We spent a few nights in an AC room on the south end of Rishikesh in Swargashram.  It was perfectly nice, despite the power always going out and rendering the AC useless.  The room was 950 rupees (about $21) -- not bad for AC.  We figured that we could survive without AC, why not spend less and find a cheaper room?

The Lonely Planet is like our bible.  And our bible told us that there were a slew of hotels and ashrams north in Laxman Jhula.  We walked there and discovered a little backpacker enclave, good and bad.  We checked out the Sri Sant Sewa ashram and they had a basic double room with a fan, private bath, for 300R.  A deal!  And no waking up early, no compulsory chanting, no hours of yoga.  We were in!

The ashram offered yoga classes twice a day for 100 rupees. The first few days it was way to hot.  The next day we went shopping for appropriate pants.  Another day we completely spaced out on the time.  Nope, no yoga for us.  Slackers.  Oh wait, that's ok, we can be slackers.

A couple of observations.  There were fantastic storms here that rolled in and cooled everything down.  Perhaps a sign of the oncoming monsoon? 

The monkeys freak me out.  One day we were walking down the street with a whole group of people when monkeys started to pelt us with nuts.  Jerks.

Monkeys and cows are quite prevalent in all the places we've been so far (as well as dogs).  And since monkeys and cows are not animals I usually see outside of the zoo or farm, it excites me to see them.  I'm freaked out by the monkeys though (rabies!) so I stayed a healthy distance away from this group, who were hanging out on the roof of the building next to our room at the ashram. 

We in general have a disdain for other backpackers.  Ok, I've publicly admitted it.  We've seen more than one person walk around with their money belt over their clothes (what's the point??).  Heard another person loudly shouting about her friend jumping in the Ganges with only a bikini on and getting stopped by the police (hello!! try not to piss everyone here off!!  bikinis in the holy ganges are a no-no).  And good lord... people are carrying massive backpacks.  What is in them?

There were also a lot of westerners smoking weed.  This was one cafe you could find a group of people  "chilling out." 

One thing we love is the colorful statues and temples all over the place.  Rishikesh is a holy city so religious symbols abounded!  This statue of Vishnu (correct me if I'm wrong) as at the entrance of the Laxman Jhula bridge.